


is this love that i'm feeling

by owilde



Category: The Walking Dead (Telltale Video Game)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Compliant, Dialogue Light, F/F, Getting Together, Romance, Well... Mostly, Wordcount: 1.000-5.000
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-05
Updated: 2018-10-05
Packaged: 2019-07-25 16:44:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,045
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16201562
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/owilde/pseuds/owilde
Summary: Violet was sort of used to the disappointment that washed over her in tidal waves each time she glanced at her wrist and saw the numbers climbing higher and higher, from weeks to months to years.Or, each person gets a timer that counts down to when they meet their soulmate.





	is this love that i'm feeling

**Author's Note:**

> god, so... it was inevitable that i was going to write a soulmate fic for these two. it just was. thank you to [vodnici](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Vodnici/pseuds/Vodnici) for being a supportive pal!
> 
> title taken from Survivor's "Is This Love" because i'm a simple 80's gay

Violet was sort of used to the disappointment that washed over her in tidal waves each time she glanced at her wrist and saw the numbers climbing higher and higher, from weeks to months to years. It was black ink against her pale skin, a clear digital timer that she’d been staring at for as long as she could remember. _More like a doomsday clock_ , she joked these days, because she couldn’t quite bear the looks she got whenever someone spotted her staring and wondering, waiting.

Before the world went to shit, it was exciting. Violet didn’t remember when exactly it had been that somebody had first told her what the clock was for, but she did remember all the nervous flips her heart had done whenever the clock began speeding down towards zero. There was a time it dove like someone leaping from a cliff, plummeting from ten years down to three days, and Violet’s breath caught in her chest.

That was back when she still wanted to meet her soulmate. When she still believed in them. Her conviction wasn’t shaken even when the three days climbed back to two weeks, then four months, then six years. She grew to expect the fluidity of it – her mom told her it was based on so many things from circumstance to chance, it was normal for it to fluctuate.

Then her mom smiled, and told her what a lucky boy there was somewhere out in the world, and Violet, even at the age of ten, felt her heart sink.

The whole system was unfair and bullshit, she thought. When Violet had arrived at Ericson’s, she’d found a miserable bunch of adolescents staring anxiously at their wrists, obsessing almost neurotically over their numbers, checking and checking and checking again to find that nothing had changed.

Even then, even as she’d looked at those people tying their life’s purpose to finding love, she’d believed. Even as she’d realized in the back of her mind how dangerous it was, to look for something that was so rare to find, to get so caught up in it, she wanted to find her. It had made everything a little bit better, to know that when everything else was shit, there had to be someone out there who could and would and _did_ love her, unconditionally.

What she didn’t understand back then was that it wasn’t unconditional. That there wouldn’t be a girl who she’d run into and who’d automatically fall for her, sweep her off her feet and carry her into the sunset. Nothing in life was that easy. People weren’t that simple, and love wasn’t that straightforward, and all of it was just… bullshit.

After the world turned upside down, she finally saw her timer for what it was. Useless. A nuisance. What use did she have for a soulmate, now? She could’ve become a monster – it seemed that most people did. Or she could’ve been too soft, a hindrance, a stone weighing her down. Violet had enough on her plate to worry about keeping someone else alive.

Louis laughed at her, of course. Called her pessimistic and cynical. But Louis could afford to laugh at her – he’d already found his person, was already content with smiling softly at his row of neat zeros and then looking at Marlon like he was the fucking moon.

Violet had been jealous. She would’ve died before admitting it, but it was true. It was harder than she’d thought to let go of years worth of expectations and dreams. But she’d been doing okay. She didn’t look at her timer that much, and when Minnie kissed her during patrol, hesitant and scared and gentle, she didn’t pull away.

They didn’t talk about the timers. Minnie knew just as well as Violet did that they weren’t meant for each other, but it didn’t _matter_. Violet knew the feeling in her chest was love, and no shitty excuse of faith could ruin what they had.

And then as suddenly as it had started, Minnie was gone, and Violet was plunged back into the icy depths of despair. She’d lie in her bed, breathing in the scent of Minnie that was slowly fading day by day, and she’d scratch at her numbers, trying to get rid of them, wanting for them to just be _gone_.

She didn’t want to love again. She didn’t want to meet her soulmate and lose them, but even more so she didn’t want to one day look and see a row of zeros, and no one in front of her.

Louis brought her food and Tenn’s drawings, kept her company through her grief. He’d sit by the foot of the bed, legs crossed and leaning against the bed frame, and sing. He sang Minnie’s favorite songs, then the songs Violet told him reminded her of Minnie. Then he ran out of songs, and began creating his own, managing to occasionally make Violet smile into her pillow.

They allowed her two weeks of grieving, and then life had to move on. Violet stopped being jealous of Louis and Marlon. She stopped scratching at her numbers. She stopped thinking about where _she_ was, how she’d survived this long. If she’d found someone else, too.

When Brody stumbled into her room one night, eyes wide and brimming with tears, and offered her wrist where Violet could see nothing but zeros, she let her lean against her and stroked her hair until sunrise, telling her that everything would be alright.

When Aasim made the decision to always wear his sleeves down and not look at his timer at all, Violet understood. He asked her why she didn’t do the same, and Violet didn’t have an answer. Maybe there was still a part of her that was, against all odds, hoping.

Months rolled by. The image of Minnie was hard to picture anymore – the details had been lost on her. Violet couldn’t remember the exact color of her eyes, or imagine the warmth of her hands against hers. She moved on, slowly. They all did.

She only really noticed that the timer was acting up on the third consecutive day. It had been set for five years again, but had suddenly dropped down to a week. Then six days. And then five.

When Violet approached Louis about it, he frowned at first, and then his face blossomed into a bright grin.

“Dude,” he said, “Vi – imagine if it’ll keep going like this. That’s five days. This could actually be it.” He pressed his hand against his chest, sighing wistfully. “Our Violet, finally finding love in this cruel, cold world–”

She snorted. “Yeah, fuck off, it’s probably just a glitch or some shit. It’ll go back to normal soon.”

But quietly, she hoped. There was a spark in her chest again, an old rekindled flame she thought she’d already suffocated. Her soulmate wasn’t dead, even after all this time. And from what Violet could tell, she was approaching their way.

There was an explosion. They all heard it, saw the smoke. Violet looked down at her timer, which was showing 00:00:00:01:38:55 in accusatory print, the minutes slowly running down. Less than two hours, and there had been an explosion that couldn’t be anything else than what Violet pictured.

Louis clapped his hand on her shoulder, shaking his head with his eyes on the pillar of smoke rising above the trees. “I gotta say,” he started, “that your soulmate really knows how to make an entrance.”

She didn’t go with them to find her. Instead, Violet locked herself in her room and buried her head in her hands, breathing too fast. It was happening, but she didn’t want to believe that it was. It didn’t make any sense. The universe didn’t work this way, it didn’t just bring people together like this, not in this world. Not in these circumstances.

But despite this, her minutes were running down, until she could see a glaring 00:00:00:00:10:25, and swallowed air, her chest feeling tight.

The timer got stuck on a minute and a half. Violet blinked at it, frowning. Then Louis barged into the room, eyes glinting with excitement, and told her to come visit the room where they’d taken her. Violet’s legs felt like jello as she stood up and followed Louis across the school, her heart hammering in her chest.

She glanced at her timer moving on to thirty seconds, then twenty, then ten. She thought she might throw up. Louis kept shooting her grins, his eyes warm and encouraging, but it did little to ease the ball of anxiety in Violet’s stomach.

Five. They stopped outside the room.

Four. Louis pressed the handle down.

Three. The door creaked open, slowly.

Two. Violet stepped inside, her body trembling like a leaf.

One–

And there she was. Lying on the bed, eyes closed and breathing softly, her soulmate. Violet blinked, staring at her, and felt her throat close up. She took another step closer, unsure and terrified. She heard the door fall shut behind her and presumed Louis had taken his exit.

There were gashes across her face, but not too deep, Violet estimated. Someone had bandaged her head, but some blood had soaked through already. She was… Violet couldn’t breathe. She drew a chair and sat down next to the bed, feeling helpless and elevated.

She wanted to reach out, but it felt invasive. She wanted to know everything there was to know about her. She wanted to have an explanation for the sudden ache in her chest, and the explicit sense that everything was slowly clicking into place. She took a shuddering breath and looked down to see a row of zeros on her arm.

Violet didn’t move during the time it took for her to wake up. The day turned into dusk, the sun setting behind the woods. She’d been dozing off when the sound of soft bangs woke her up. Violet’s eyes shot open, and focused instinctively on the girl on the bed, who was struggling against her restraints.

“Hey,” she croaked, rubbing the sleep from her eyes. “Hey, don’t – I can get those for you, okay? Just stay still for a sec.”

The girl stopped, her eyes sliding over to Violet and squinting in suspicion. “Who are you?”

Violet froze, her fingers ripping at the edges of the tape. She locked eyes with the girl. Her voice was almost soft, but there was a clear edge to it that told stories Violet didn’t need to hear to know about. It suited her.

“Uh,” she said, feeling her heart do flips again. “I’m… I’m Violet.”

She ripped the tape off and the girl sat up, rubbing her wrist slightly and glancing around the room before her eyes settled on Violet again. She looked more mellow now that she wasn’t tied down. “Clementine,” she introduced. The name sent flutters down Violet’s stomach. “Are you supposed to watch over me?”

“Uh,” Violet said again, and felt like the world’s greatest idiot. “I’m – no. I’m just…” She didn’t know how she was supposed to bring this up. Was there a protocol for this? A set of guidelines? Why wasn’t Louis here to break the ice? “I’m… check your wrist.”

Clementine frowned heavily, and glanced down at her hand. “What about – oh.”

Violet was wringing her hands nervously. “So, that’s me. That’s why I’m here.”

There was a long silence as Clementine stared at her numbers, not saying anything. Her face was indecipherable – Violet tried to read the flicker of her eyes, the slow blinking. She realized, more poignantly than ever, that soulmates weren’t magic. That nothing happened in the snap of fingers.

Clementine looked up, and finally, her lips curled into a warm smile. “So, I did make it.”

Violet frowned. “What?”

“I picked a direction where the numbers seemed to be running down,” she explained. “Drove down the road that was leading towards you, I guess. And now here you are.”

“And are you…” Violet looked away, biting her lip. “Are you disappointed?”

Clementine’s smile deepened. “Disappointed?” She asked, amused. “Never.”

The warmth flooding in Violet’s chest was, she realized, what had kept her cold all these years.


End file.
